


And This is Heaven (not that we're going there)

by AshToSilver



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-09
Updated: 2014-09-09
Packaged: 2018-02-16 17:25:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2278344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshToSilver/pseuds/AshToSilver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The clown falls back like a boneless doll and the look on his face - slight horror mixed with feverous anticipation, bloody nose from an earlier punch and an even bloodier mouth, hovering halfway between stunned and smiling, those wide eyes, that crooked nose, the rain running down his flattened darkened hair - that look right there is rapturous. It is heavenly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And This is Heaven (not that we're going there)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Iship_lover](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iship_lover/gifts).



> For iship, who requested "first and last kiss". I love all my friends who know my best writing style is PURE HEART RIPPING ANGST.
> 
> Enjoy~
> 
>  **EDIT Aug/2016:** I have changed my username, I am now going by AshToSilver on AO3 and [my new Tumblr](http://ashtosilver.tumblr.com/)! You can still call me Alex, but I no longer have a day of the week in my name.

It starts in the hissing rain of a forgotten November night, the sort of darkness that never feels right because it blurs against the bat’s skin, morphs into something poison-like, that burrows down and down and  _down_ , until it works its way through Kevlar and into flesh and bone. Takes root like a fungus or a parasite,  _grows_  where Bruce does not want it.

Twists and turns and whispers, so sure and so clear, that  _he is broken shattered pieces against the ground God forbid you take care better fall little bat why’d you get up in the first place when they cut you down in the beginning_.

And if he’s being completely, and  _absolutely_  honest, he doesn’t think the clown had feelings for him before that night. If he’s being even  _more_  honest, completely and totally coming clean (and he never is, never does, so this remains a secret), the clown probably doesn’t have anything beyond the barest of intentions and desires far after that night as well.

The clown is not built for kindness and affection, tender moments and romantic urges. The clown is rotten fragments of glass that dig into the skin  on Bruce’s fingers and it takes a long, long time for those little fragments to pull themselves together enough to form something worth looking at; a pretty piece of abstract art that makes no sense to anyone beyond the creator.

Even then, it’s questionable at all, what the clown plans to do or become or be or what does the clown  _feel_ , if Bruce pretends he doesn’t think of the clown as a monster. If he pretends that he isn’t pretending the clown isn’t a man. What does a man with bleached white skin, acid green hair and curious fashion sense even  _want_? Does he want the bat, all black curves and half-remembered nightmares, or does he want the handsome, well-off man that lives beneath, beside and on-top of that other creature? Or maybe, the clown who is  _possibly_  - but unlikely - a man or a person or a child who got too old too quickly, just wants to press his nose into the lines of the body Bruce and the bat share, just wants that body to be there tomorrow and forever.

On a cold, wet night in November, he rips a splitting scar through clown’s bottom lip and calls it a kiss. Grabs rich-cheap fabric that almost bleeds proper colour onto him, hauls his body closer, sees it slacken instinctively-

(There’s probably something there. The bat sees every time the clown does something like this, something that whispers that the clown’s  _hands_  know this thing even if his mind doesn’t, that his legs  _make_  this jump but his eyes don’t remember doing it before, and sometimes he hisses and whimpers and doesn’t look in the bat’s eyes, and he sure as hell isn’t remembering, but something in him still knows there’s suppose to be  _pain_  there. And sometimes the bat gives him pain anyway, because it’s better to remember something new then to forget something old, or at least that’s what he tells himself.)

The clown falls back like a boneless doll and the look on his face - slight horror mixed with feverous anticipation, bloody nose from an earlier punch and an even bloodier mouth, hovering halfway between stunned and smiling, those wide eyes, that crooked  _nose,_ the rain running down his flattened darkened hair - that look right there is rapturous. It is heavenly.

He works to suck all the breath from the clown’s lungs and when he comes up tasting blood on his own teeth, the clown’s still pinned beneath him, eyes closed, limbs loose, no fight left in him but so much fire that Bruce can feel the heat radiating off him through the bat’s thick scales.

The clown draws in a single breath - long,  _shaking_  - and lets it out with a bit of a worn-out huff. That is all. _  
_

\- - -

… And he sucks in air, tries to pull it in, hold it down like a balloon trying to fly off, but it doesn’t  _work_  like that, and he can’t breath,  _he can’t breath_.

His teeth clack, he works his jaw, wants to move his legs, because he’s been kneeling on the floor beside this man - this  _stupid fucking man_  - for hours now, but he can’t  _move_.

Moving would require his heart to beat so it can power his lungs that should then pull air in and feed his blood and keep his brain going but his heart isn’t doing any of that. It sits in his chest,  _stutters_  like a worried child and twists too painfully. Pitter-patter-stutter- _thump-_ getup-getup-getupbatsy.

Batsy’s dying.

There’s a very large portion of his head dedicated to this knowledge. It’s growing bigger and bigger and pushing out things like  _food_  and  _sleep_. It’s growing bigger and poisoning his blood and bleeding into his fingers and his toes, and he  _cries,_ though he isn’t the sort of man to cry, doesn’t believe in it, doesn’t want it.

He’s known it for years (and he hasn’t said a thing), he’s seen it for months (and he hasn’t done a  _thing_ ) and he’s been sitting here for days now, and he can’t do  _anything_. He can’t, he can’t-

They’re in a ten-foot-square cell, clean water but minimal food and he knows they’re coming,  _he_  ( _batsy-dear_ ) knows it too. They’ll come for them, the clown and the bat and they’ll probably slaughter them like meat.

He’s not too worried about that part. Objectively, he knows that the second Gotham finds out, Gotham will bite, because the clown and the bat belong to Gotham and Gotham is a a temperamental  _bitch_  at the best of times, and a possessive, greedy, psychotic, murderous  _mess_  of a bastard at the worst.

Gotham will bite. Gotham will tear. Gotham will eat and swallow and grow stronger from having fed. He’s not worried. Someone will replace the bat and someone will replace him, and Gotham will nurture them through violence and aggression until they’re  _perfect._

He’s not worried about after. But  _now_  is still here, growing stronger by the minute and for every breath he struggles to work into his lungs, Bats echoes him, gasping for air.

Gasp, gasp. Like a fish out of water, like the dying, filthy mess that is every sad, sorry man, woman and child that he’s ever murdered.

(He regrets those right now. He regrets everything. He regrets squirming too much when the bat had begun to explore him, because he’d enjoyed it once he worked up the courage for it. He regrets making those little baby bats hate him so much, because they’d been pretty swell after they’d all made amends. He regrets every building he ever blew up because he  _likes_  going out in public and every torn suit, all the broken property and stolen souls, they all sit in his head and he  _regrets them all_.)

"Joker." So soft and knowing, that voice. He loves that  _voice_ , he can’t stand to think of missing it. “Joker, can- can you…”

It hurts him as much as it must hurt his bat, to be propped up against the wall, the cold floor doing nothing for old bones. He tries to be gentle though, even if it isn’t something he’s been taught how to do. They’d never played gentle, not even on a dare.

He wonders, a moment later, if perhaps his bat heard something he didn’t, because a moment later their cell is filled to the brim with armed men.

He tries to curl close, presses himself against the thin ribcage that has become the shelter for his bat’s heart, and gives them all a look - the look that’s brought cities to their knees, the one that’s made grown-ass men  _piss themselves in terror_.

He’s murderous, and if he had the barest of intentions of leaving his bat’s side, he’d show every one of them the true meaning of the word slaughter.

"Any last words, Bruce Wayne?" Someone’s talking, but the words are only just making it into the clown’s head.

"You can’t kill me." He’s weak, but the bat’s still blazing, alight with glory. "You can kill  _me_ , but you won’t kill the bat.”

A snort. “How typical. And what about your clown? A final performance for the camera, you sick freak?”

His hands almost form claws, digging into the battered, bloodied Kevlar that the bat’s been wearing for days now. The cowl’s off, he’s lost his jacket  _somewhere_ , and for the first time, perhaps ever, perhaps forever, they’re both looking right at the lenses, faces clear and chins held high.

He’ll never get another chance like this. So he turns the fraction it takes, presses his forehead against the cold brow of his better half, then tilts down and-

It’s not their first kiss, but it’s close. He doesn’t bite hard enough to bleed, but he still tastes the bat so beautifully. He can feel the faint tremble buried inside both their skins. The air passed between the two of them for the briefest of moments smells like sickness.

The Batman says “I love you.”

The camera is rolling. All of Gotham is seeing this. He can’t even remember who’s about to kill them.

So the Joker replies “I  _know_.”

And that is the end.


End file.
